


And That Has Made All the Difference

by authoressjean



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Bilbo and River friendship, Canonical Character Death, Doctor Who/The Hobbit crossover, Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, Episode: s04e09 Forest of the Dead, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers for The Hobbit, spoilers for River Song's timeline, this has a bittersweet ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authoressjean/pseuds/authoressjean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Series 4 and River Song's timeline. Hobbit/Doctor Who Crossover.</p>
<p>Bilbo loves and hates the sound of the TARDIS. And he wouldn't go with the Doctor, he's in the middle of his own adventure with thirteen dwarves, except that it's THIS planet, THIS part in the story of River Song that he has to be there for. He made a promise he would be there.</p>
<p>So Bilbo goes to The Library. River knows the end of his story; it's only fair that he be there for hers.</p>
<p>Canonical character death. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And That Has Made All the Difference

**Author's Note:**

> I am following canon for BOTH Doctor Who and the Hobbit, in regards to canonical character death, so that should tell you who. I am very sorry. I have another plotbunny idea of a crossover with the Doctor helping Bilbo rewrite his own book, but that's for another day.
> 
> So this is a very odd piece that I wrote after catching hubby up on the 11th Doctor, and after we watched "The Angels Take Manhattan" I went back and rewatched both "The Silence In the Library" and "Forest of the Dead" and could not stop sobbing at the end. And I had Thorin/Bilbo on the brain because of my 'verse and have always considered the "what if" of Bilbo as a companion so. This was born.
> 
> It's a minimalist piece with jumping steps. So I'm not trying to explain anything, and if you don't know about the Doctor Who episodes you will probably be confused. Again, this was just a piece I wanted to get out of my head.
> 
> Not certain I'm happy with it, but I'm going to stop fussing with it.
> 
> Title from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken".

He comes in the middle of one night as they're making camp east of the Misty Mountains. The dwarves are frightened of the sound but Bilbo knows that sound. He lived for that sound, once. It still shoots a thrill through his body, and his heart begins to beat wildly in his chest. Oh, he loves and hates that sound so much.

But there it is, right in the clearing, and the door opens and it's young!him. Bilbo's started trying to distinguish, but it's hard. The face may seem young, sometimes, but the man within is so very old. This one is still young, his eyes still sparkling and eager to see the universe. There are scars to be seen, scars of companions lost and hard battles that he could never win, though god help him, Bilbo knows he tried.

But this time, it's not him who'll fight a hard battle he can't win. This time, it's Bilbo who has to.

And the thrill dies a cold and terrible death when the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS with a grin. “You said you wanted me to come get you when I went,” the Doctor says. “And I'm going. The planet that's a Library, all those books! Are you coming?”

Of course he is. He has to.

He forces a grin himself and stands, dusting off his pants. “I wouldn't miss it,” he says. There's a bit of a different tone to his voice, one of the accents he's picked up – Rose, perhaps, or Clara, certainly not Amy her accent is all her own – and he displays it with pride. He walks to the TARDIS with a surety in his step that he absolutely doesn't feel. But he has to go.

A hand grabs him by the elbow, and Bilbo turns, startled out of his determination. Thorin stands before him, eyes wide in a way that Bilbo's never seen before. The dwarf almost looks afraid. “What are you doing?” Thorin asks. His eyes dart up to the TARDIS – can't be helped, big blue box that appears out of nowhere will do that to you the first time or two, and then it's old hat – and then back to Bilbo.

“I'll be back in two shakes, I promise,” Bilbo swears, and it's the truth. This young!Doctor knows how to fly the TARDIS, unlike another version who's dreadful about it. Thank god for River who can pilot-

His stomach threatens to expel dinner, and he takes a shaky breath. “I'll be back,” he says again.

“What _is_ that?” Kili breathes, awe mixed with his fear. “How did it just appear?”

“ A Time Lord,” Gandalf says. Bilbo shouldn't be surprised that Gandalf knows what it is, or specifically that he knows  _who_ it is. “Doctor.”

“Olórin,” the Doctor says with his cheeky grin. The dwarves are torn between staring at the TARDIS in apprehension or staring at Gandalf in shock. Gandalf looks annoyed. Bilbo would be more amused if he didn't know what he has to do.

He tries to pull away again but Thorin is a firm and unmovable point. Bilbo purses his lips: he's no time for a long, gentle explanation, and he doubts Thorin would appreciate it. The “cold bath” method, as Rory lovingly calls it, will have to do. “He can travel through time and space. That blue box is called the TARDIS and that's how he travels. And I have to go with him.”

“You're with us,” Kili insists. “You can't just leave us!”

“ I'll be back,” Bilbo promises again. To Thorin directly he says, “I have to go. This isn't a debate. I  _have_ to go. It's a fixed point in time,” he lies, but maybe it is. Some things are in flux while others aren't. He wishes this were a flux point, that he could fix it. Maybe he can. All the more reason he has to go.

“Not without me,” Thorin finally says. It's amazing what saving someone's life can do; one minute they're doing their best to ignore you and find your every fault, and the next, they're as protective as can be, as if you were their cub and they your mother. At any other point, it would've been welcome, but not here, not now.

Bilbo yanks his hand free and hurries to the TARDIS. Donna is inside, and he tries to work out if they'd met already. He knows when they'll meet again – when the Doctor sends everyone and all the planets back on their merry way – but he's not certain if they've personally met yet. “Do you know who I am?” Bilbo asks.

The Doctor may have an odd timeline, and his is all mixed up with others, but Bilbo's been a bouncer almost his whole life. It was his mother's fault, he supposes. Getting mixed up in Time Lord business.

Donna gives him a look. “Do you think I'm addled or something? 'Course I know who you are.”

Good, that'll make part of this easier, then. “Just checking, you never know,” he says. The Doctor's already at the controls, pulling switches, and Bilbo reaches back to close the door.

A hand shoves him forward, and Bilbo stumbles into the TARDIS proper. When he looks back at the door, Thorin and Kili are resolutely glaring at him, and both are inside. The glare wears off as the looks of wonder and bewilderment settle in, which is one of Bilbo's favorite parts. Watching them stare around at the gloriousness of the TARDIS.

Not today, though. He wishes he could. But the Doctor says with a triumphant cry, “The Library!” and Bilbo knows he'll find no joy. Not while he has to face this.

Because he has to.

He made a promise.

 

 

“ _He didn't know me. The day I died.”_

_Bilbo turned to River. She looks composed as ever, but there's a sadness about her face. “I told Rory, once, that the worst day of my life would be the day the Doctor looked at me and didn't recognize me. And I was right. Dying was easier, in the face of that.”_

“ _Did you have...friends? There, with you?”_

_The dream was so odd. Madame Vastra was speaking swiftly with Jenny and Strax, and Clara was still thinking over everything in that clever way that she does. It gave Bilbo the chance to speak with River, only to find that she, too, was in the dream because she was dead. “Forever in a dream,” she'd said, as if she hadn't minded._

“ _One,” River said. Then she smiled at him. “I had you there, at The Library, that horrible day. More than I'd hoped to have, really. You made all the difference. You made my passing so much easier, because in the end, there was someone there who knew everything about me and was still willing to come say goodbye.”_

_She touched his cheek and somehow still felt warm. “You dear, dear heart,” she murmured. “Always wearing it on your sleeve. And you wore it that day for me.”_

_It left him so cold to think about. Saying goodbye to such an old and dear friend. “What happened?” he asked, even though he knew what she'd say._

_She grinned anyway as if he'd told her the funniest joke in all the universe. “Spoilers,” she said, and then everything had fallen apart, and when he woke up from the dream, she'd been gone._

_And he made a vow that he would be there, when she needed him. So he told a younger version of the Doctor, when he met up with him again, that when he decided to go to a planet full of books, that Bilbo demanded to go. “Promise me,” Bilbo said._

“ _I swear it,” the Doctor said, and he took off in his TARDIS, Rose by his side._

_And Bilbo waited._

 

 

He gets to the room in the Library after the Doctor and Donna do, having fought to keep Kili and Thorin from the shadows. “Stay out of the shadows!” he insists again, only to nearly back away from the figures in spacesuits. It takes him back to the lake in America, to the past when they'd fought the Silence. He shakes himself.

But there she is, in an entirely different suit. Except she's not grinning all that much, anymore. She's looking at the Doctor like she knows something horrible is about to happen. Like she's pieced together that he's not her Doctor, and Bilbo's going to have to watch the devastation cross her face when she figures it out.

“River,” he calls instead, and she whips her head over to where he stands. The relief on her face is quickly swallowed up by her bright grin, and she hurries to greet him. Her embrace is firm and leaves him clinging to her. He doesn't know what happens here. He only knows how it ends.

“Well, at least there's one face here that appreciates me,” she says. She glances at Thorin and Kili, so out of place in their dwarven gear, and she raises an eyebrow. “My, I didn't know he kept so many companions at once. I thought you were more inclined to dole them out one at a time, in order to savor them.”

The Doctor frowns at her. “I don't 'savor' them,” he says incredulously. “They're Bilbo's friends, Thorin and Kili of the Line of Durin.”

“We never told you that,” Kili says, and when River turns to Bilbo, there's an aching on her face, and it's not for her. It's for him.

He forgets, sometimes, that River knows how his story ends, and always has. The Doctor, too. Not one of them will let him look at the book, but the Doctor assures him that one of these days, they're going to meet a man by the name of Tolkien. And Bilbo's going to befriend him, and the man will write a book all about him.

He's assuming he won't enjoy telling the story. Not if it ends the way River seems to know it will. He hates himself for the thought that now they're on equal ground, that he knows how her book ends, too.

“Let me look at the computer,” the Doctor says, and just like that, they're off and running.

 

 

They lose Donna. They also lose the sweet young girl whose only crime was that she was too 'stupid' to talk to, and it makes Bilbo find a moment of sweet, guilty pleasure in the way everyone stares at her corpse in anguish. _Good_ , he thinks. Maybe they'll learn to cherish others a little bit more, now. Those who aren't as brilliant as they are.

But they lose Donna, and they lose one of the other crew members to the Vashta Nerada and they're running, running through the Library with the swarm steadily following behind them. Bilbo hates to admit it, but it's part of why he went with Thorin in the first place: because he missed running.

The other part of why he went was due in part to the book. The book the Doctor never knew he peeked at, for just a moment.

They lose the other Dave, and they reach the terrible, terrible moment where River gives away the secret he knows she's kept for this very time. The time when the Doctor needed to know her but didn't. He watches the Doctor go very, very still, and when he looks at River again, there's nothing but stunned silence. Struck to his very core, and River looks so wretched that Bilbo wants to wrap her in his embrace and tell her lies, that it'll be all right and that they'll be fine. That she'll see her Doctor again, and she will. Sort of. Just not...not really.

Thorin comes to him then, gazing at him with unreadable eyes. “What,” Bilbo snaps testily, hating the sinking feeling of knowing time's running out. He hates it.

“You...you are so much more than I ever thought you were.”

Bilbo glances up at him then. “I thought you a simple hobbit of the Shire,” Thorin says, before shaking his head. “But you are so much more than that. You are a star traveler, a planet seeker, a hobbit who walks with Lords and through Time itself.” He pauses. “Why did you come with _us_? Why, when you could have been journeying instead with the Doctor?”

It's all Bilbo can do to not cry in relief when the computer insists that it's self destructing and keeps him from answering Thorin's question. They fly, all of them, down to the core of the planet. They meet CAL, sweet, young Charlotte who begs for help. Kili looks stricken, and even Thorin turns away.

Then the Doctor comes up with one of his mad and crazy ideas, the one that will save everything but will end him. River shouts at him with more terror in her voice than Bilbo's heard in a long time, and the Doctor insists, because of course it's what the Doctor does. “I hate you  _so much_ sometimes!” she shouts as she runs to the other room, and Bilbo hurries after her, ignoring the Doctor's statement.

Because he yells, “I know!” even though he doesn't. He doesn't have the faintest clue how many times River is going to yell that at him. And it's going to be a lot. But perhaps he understands what he'll be. Well, maybe. Because with this idiotic plan, the man will never actually get to  _meet_ her.

“Here, start unhooking,” River snaps at them. She pats Bilbo apologetically on the shoulder, but he only gives her a quick smile. She doesn't need his forgiveness. He knows how upset she is.

“What are we doing this for?” Thorin asks. Kili's already undoing more wires than Bilbo had ever thought possible, his fingers swift and adept, even at this. Kili would do well in a future world.

“We have to-” and then Bilbo cuts himself off, because River's gone. The Doctor isn't saying anything anymore, and River's gone. Ice coats the bottom of his stomach, and he makes to go back to the other room.

Thorin hauls him up by his elbow and Bilbo doesn't think, he just turns and shoves hard. Thorin stumbles back, surprised, and Bilbo takes as calming a breath as he can manage. “Not now,” he says. “You have to, you have to stay. Keep doing what she asked you to do.”

The self destruct timer sounds off at twelve minutes, and he's out of time. He has to go,  _now_ . “Bilbo,” Thorin says, and Bilbo shakes his head.

“Just  _please_ . I have to do this, I have to go.”

Thorin doesn't move, and neither does Kili or Lux. Bilbo turns and runs.

He finds Anita's body crumpled on the ground, and there, being handcuffed to a pole, is the Doctor. River clicks it closed and shakes her head. “Always handcuffs, you and me,” she murmurs, and she turns to move away. She stops when she sees Bilbo, though, and she raises her gun at him.

Bilbo isn't afraid. She hadn't been able to shoot him as the lost and wild Melody Pond. She isn't going to shoot him now. “River,” he begins.

“I have to do this,” she says, her voice trembling. “Bilbo, you know I have to. There has to be a Doctor. There _has_ to be. There's still so much more that he's got to do, including meeting me.”

“I know,” Bilbo says quietly, and River stares at him. He swallows back what tastes like dinner – ages and eons and three hours ago all at once – and he nods. “I know.”

“You do,” she breathes. “How did you know?”

He huffs a wet laugh. “Spoilers.”

“Rude,” she says, and the grin she gives is half formed but genuine. “You sneaky little hobbit.”

“You say it all the time.”

“It's my line. You can't steal my line.”

“Well, I was just properly hired as a burglar. Needed to start stealing something, I suppose.”

“ _Nine minutes to self-destruct._ ”

The cheer dies. River lowers her gun and moves to the cables the Doctor had been in the process of pulling out. She takes a seat near them and starts wiring them together. Bilbo steps towards her, and she looks up, as if startled to find him there. “What?” she asks. “You know how this ends. You know what I have to do.”

“I do,” he says, and he glances at her blue book. Never to have another page written in it, never again. “I just...” He swallows. “I can do it. I can connect the wires, I can do it-”

“You know I can't let you,” she says, and he  _hates_ this. “You have your own story to finish.”

“But I can't just let you _die_!” he explodes. He chokes on a sob that comes out of nowhere and bites his lip. “Even though that's why I came.”

Her eyes widen. “What do you mean-?”

“I made a promise, that I would be here,” he says shakily. He sniffles and feels the tears dripping down his face. “I knew where, I just didn't know when. So I told the Doctor, as far back as I could reach him, to come get me when he decided to go to the Library.”

He swallows and keeps going because this is important, this is _so important_ that she knows. “But when he came for me, he was so young, River. Look at him, as young as he is! And I knew he wouldn't know you. And I knew this was going to be your worst day, the day you lost him, and you were going to die and I had to, I couldn't...”

“Bilbo,” she murmurs, and he manages to choke out the rest.

“I couldn't let you die alone. I know everything about you and who you are, and you deserved to have someone here with you at the end. Someone who knew Melody Pond and River Song. And he wouldn't.” He forces himself as tall as he can go, back ramrod straight, because he has to be brave for her. She deserves that. “But I do. So I had to be here.”

She rises from her seat, eyes on nothing but him as he stands and shivers and sniffles. “My dear, dear Bilbo,” she murmurs in the way that she always does but never will again, and he clings to her as hard as she clings to him. “You broke your heart for me.”

He chokes back more tears and clings to her all the tighter. When she pulls away, her eyes are red and awash with tears, and he can barely see her through his. “You always wear your heart on your sleeve,” she says. “It's going to end in heartache if you do.”

“I know,” he says, and her eyes widen. “I mean, I know it does. And I know I'm on the journey where it does.” And he has a horrible, terrible feeling that he knows exactly how it happens. But it's not anything he can think about now. Not now, when he's already losing one person he loves.

“You read your book,” she whispers. “Bilbo-”

“Only the middle,” he says. “Only enough to catch of glimpse.” A glimpse of Thorin's name and Beorn's name, a man Gandalf will introduce them to soon. He thinks. It was enough to leave him nearly bowled over in shock when Thorin introduced himself. Tall and handsome Thorin, and Bilbo had known he'd go with them.

He'd tried to fight fate. He'd tried to insist he wouldn't travel with them. But the lure of running, running to meet his destiny at long last, couldn't be denied. And in the end, he'd been weak, and he'd run after them. Just like the book had said he would.

He'd thought leaving the Doctor behind would keep him safe from heartbreak. He knows he's so very wrong.

“They tried to scare me with talk of dragon fire,” he says with a watery laugh. “As if that's any worse than a Dalek. Honestly. I'll take a dragon over a Dalek anyday. Or a Cyberman.”

River gazes at him and wipes tears from his cheeks with her thumbs. “Remember this, Bilbo Baggins,” she says. “Remember the day you spoke bravely about dragons. You're going to need it. And when you're past the dragon, remember it again. And know that you're not alone.”

He nods jerkily and lets her back away. “Right,” she says, and she straightens her back with purpose. “I need a pen. My last pages to fill, and I've only got...six minutes to do it.”

The Doctor will be awake soon. And River deserves a private goodbye with the man who was, is, and will be her husband. “I'll get it to your Doctor,” he says. “If I can.”

“Thank you,” she says, and she gives him the brightest smile she can. It's wet with fresh tears that spill over her cheeks, before she scrubs them away with the back of her hand. “Keep him safe, for me.”

“I'll try.”

She nods and calls for Lux, and he appears a moment later with Thorin and Kili. “Upstairs, all of you,” she says. “And hurry. If this goes south, you'll need to get out quickly.”

No one mentions anything about the Doctor, still sprawled on the floor. Bilbo doesn't envy him when he wakes. The heartache he'll endure, the heartache that an older Doctor has already faced, knowing River was coming to the Library.

Bilbo runs after them and leaves River behind with the Doctor. When the people reappear, every last one of them one hundred years behind where they should be but still thankful to be alive, Bilbo leans his head against a bookshelf and cries.

He's got his face in order, though, for when the Doctor reappears with River's screwdriver and her blue book. And even after the Doctor somehow manages to save her into the computer, it's still not enough to take the pain out of his heart.

 

 

The night is still dark when they return to the dwarven camp. Kili hurries to Fili to tell him everything, and Bilbo would worry except he knows Kili will make half of it up just to try and impress his brother.

“River mentioned you read your book,” the Doctor says quietly. “You shouldn't have done that.”

“Not even past the middle pages,” Bilbo promises. “Just a peek. I don't know what's coming.” He doesn't know if that's good or bad.

The Doctor gives him a small smile, though, and steps back into the TARDIS. “Come back and see me sometime?” Bilbo calls. The blue book burns against his heart like a brand, tucked safely away in his jacket. He'd give his life before he let the book fall or be lost.

The Doctor just grins and closes the door with a snap of his fingers. The TARDIS disappears, and the dwarves are still shocked that they came and went so swiftly. Not even ten minutes had passed, as far as Gandalf has mentioned. Just like Bilbo promised Thorin.

The dwarf is silent as ever, but he rests a hand on Bilbo's arm, not holding, just resting. “What is a Dalek?”

Bilbo stills. “It's not nice to eavesdrop on a conversation you don't belong in.”

“You took off with such fear and grief in your eyes, how was I not to follow?”

It warms him, that Thorin followed because he cares for Bilbo, because he was honestly  _worried_ . “Yes, well. A Dalek is nothing you need to worry about, thank god. We've enough to deal with here.”

“Do you know how this journey ends?”

Bilbo shakes his head. “No, I don't. I caught a glimpse. That's all. I saw your name, so when you came, I knew. I knew I had to go with you, no matter how worried I was.” He doesn't tell Thorin that their journey ends in heartache, that Bilbo has a horrible and sinking feeling that he's going to lose the dwarf he calls so dear. River and the Doctor never told him how it ended, but their faces spoke of an unhappy ending.

“Then we will forge our own path,” Thorin says, and Bilbo gives him a smile. Thorin's hand is warm against his, and his own smile promises a bright future.

And Bilbo knows he'll do stupid things, terrible things, things that could get him killed, if just to see that smile again. He's used to doing foolish things in the name of those he loves. He's run with the Doctor for quite some time.

But this is his adventure, his own journey, and he's never loved anyone quite like Thorin before. Bilbo knows without a doubt that he'll do what River did, if he can: he'll give himself up if it manages to spare the one he loves. He'll do it.

He pushes the thoughts down for the time being and moves instead back to the others, Thorin a warm presence beside him.

 

 

He's curled up in a ball somewhere, he doesn't even know where, when that horrible, wonderful sound comes to his ears. He buries his face in his knees and just lets the tears continue to roll.

The creaking door opens. Footsteps move across the stone floor, and Bilbo doesn't know which Doctor it will be, when he looks up. He doesn't know who will greet him.

But when he raises his head, it's not the Doctor he sees, and he stares with tears afresh springing to his eyes. And when River Song kneels in front of him and murmurs, “My dear, dear Bilbo,” he starts crying in earnest. She pulls her to him, and he's certain she thinks that he clutches at her because of Fili, because of Kili, because of the wonderful dwarf he loved who lies cold in a tent somewhere. And he does cling to her for them, for the love he won and lost in such a short time.

But he clings because it's  _her_ , one who's never been to the Library in her life, not yet, and she's here, and he clings and sobs and sobs.

When he looks up, the Doctor is there, his eyes old and knowing. He knows why Bilbo cries. And he knows what's in Bilbo's pocket, a little disheveled but still blue as ever.

He'll give it to the Doctor, this Doctor, her Doctor, when River isn't looking. And the Doctor will keep it in his treasure trove of things that he keeps tucked away and only for himself. Or perhaps, perhaps he'll see it mailed to Rory and Amy, an anonymous gift in the post that will tell them everything they need to know about what happened to their little Melody before they even open the cover.

He wants to tell her not to ever set foot in the Library. He wants to yell at her for not warning him of how this would end.

He buries his face in River's neck instead and says nothing. Later, he will thank her for being there, when his world fell apart. He'll thank her because she made a difference for him, in the face of such death and despair.

And he's glad that he could be the difference for her, when her time was over and her running days ended.

“We'll take you home,” River says quietly, “when you're ready.”

He'll never be ready. “Perhaps go somewhere first, in between?”

“The whole universe,” the Doctor promises. “Anywhere you want to go.”

Bilbo nods. He's not done running. Not yet.

That night, he dreams of running with Thorin, alongside the Doctor and River. Thorin's hand is warm in his.

END

 


End file.
